


sings the tune without the words

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Ficlet, Flirting, M/M, Meet-Cute, Pre-Relationship, weird belligerent flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24142315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: Writer's block sucks enough on its own. Ronan doesn't need to also get mocked by some smartass who works at Barnes & Noble.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 61
Kudos: 703





	sings the tune without the words

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt: bookstore!au, meet cute, and “fuck. fuck fuck fuck fuck this shit. fuck.”

"Fuck."

Ronan taps his pen on his notebook, on the spot halfway down the page where the words stopped happening. Maybe that will scare them out of hiding.

It doesn't.

"Fuck."

He flips backward to a different page. Lots of white space on this one. Plenty of room for the words to stretch out.

They don't.

"Fuck."

He thumbs through the notebook until he finds a page that's nearly done. It wouldn't take very many words to finish. He'd settle for _one damn word_.

He doesn't get it.

"Fuck this shit."

He slams the notebook shut. Some goddamn use it was leaving the house to write, hoping that something, the drive, the change of scenery, the hum of people asking about _new releases_ over shitty pop music, would shake the words loose. But it didn't; they're still gone, wherever it is that they go when he can't find them, and they took his patience with them.

It doesn't help to tell himself that the words always come back eventually. He has lived through some very long _eventually_ s.

"Fuck," he says again.

A book thumps down on the table in front of him.

Ronan jumps.

He'd been hunched over his notebook, half the table taken up by his elbows and his coffee cups and his abject failure. Now he jerks upright, a muscle in his back twinging, and glares murderously at whatever moron thinks they can sit at the other half of the table just because he's not using it.

Except it's not a hipster with laptop messenger bag or a dork teenager with a stack of manga or a grad student mainlining overpriced caffeine. It's an employee.

Ronan scopes out the book just long enough to catch the name _Roget_. He doesn't waste any more time on it. Bookstore guy is much more interesting to look at. He has a name on him, too: _Adam._

"What's that for?" Ronan demands. 

"It's a thesaurus," Adam explains, except that's not an explanation at all. He waits, like he thinks that deserves a response, and when he doesn't get one he drawls, "that's a book that you can use to look up words that mean the same thing as other words."

"I know what a thesaurus is," he snaps. "Why are you knocking over my coffee with it?"

Adam looks pointedly away from Ronan to his coffee cup, like he can tell that it's empty and also that when it wasn't empty it was a butterscotch latte.

"You've said fuck eight times in the last five minutes," he says. "You need to expand your vocabulary."

Ronan stares. He is abso-fucking-lutely wordless again, but at least this time he knows why. The _nerve_ on this guy. The sheer fucking balls, to critique another man's swearing.

Adam raises an eyebrow, like Ronan is being unreasonable and he wants to hurry this along. The arrogance. This is what happens when you let people walk around with faces like that, they think they're right about everything.

"There's no way 'fuck' is in the thesaurus."

Adam shrugs. "You won't know until you check, will you?"

And then he _leaves_. What the hell. Who chucks a thesaurus at someone and leaves?

Ronan isn't going to open the thesaurus, because he knows he's right, but then he's just sitting there some more with his stupid garbage notebook and proving that he's right about something starts to sound pretty good. He flips through the _f_ s and discovers, yup, reference books haven't got any more interesting since the last time he used one.

He keeps flipping through it, bored and restless. _Damn_ is in there, but they're using it all wrong. Same with _ass_. He's surprised to see _shit_ , but the top synonym they list is _poop_ and those are not the same fucking word in any way that matters.

"Your book is useless," he says the next time he sees Adam. He's carrying a chair back into the cafe part of the store; someone must have dragged it into the book part of the store, because who could pass up a chance to sit on something this ugly and uncomfortable. "The closest thing it has is 'fornicate' and I'm not going to say -- " he looks at the page -- "'philander' when I'm pissed off."

"It doesn't have that same ring," Adam agrees. He sets the chair down _at Ronan's table_. There are already two chairs. That's already one too many.

Ronan shoves the thesaurus toward him. "Take your stupid book full of words back."

"Yeah, most books are full of words, that's not a very useful descriptor," Adam tells him. "You should hang onto it, maybe it'll help you finish your novel."

Ronan frowns. He's supposed to be annoyed right now, not confused. Although he can be annoyed about being confused. "What novel?"

"You're in a Barnes & Noble writing longhand in a composition notebook," Adam says. "Are you honestly going to tell me that you don't have three chapters of a bad novel in there?"

"I don't."

Adam shrugs at him again, not buying it, and walks away.

Ronan shuts the thesaurus. It's ceased being interesting now that he's underlined all of the bad words, and it was never going to be helpful. He doesn't need to find a new word if he can't find any words in the first place.

Without the distraction there's nothing but his stupid empty page and his stupid empty brain. His eyes drift over to the main part of the store. He gets annoyed when he doesn't see Adam, and then he gets annoyed again when he realizes that's what he's looking for. That doesn't stop his eyes from wandering.

He does spot Adam a few times, never for very long: putting books on shelves, taking books off shelves, talking to customers who come up to him. He has a very polite face on. None of the customers look annoyed. He isn't being rude to them even a little. Only Ronan got singled out for that special treatment, for some reason.

Probably he was the only one who'd been swearing, but that can't be it.

He stares at a blank page for a while -- if he can't finish anything old maybe he can finish something new, except he doesn't have any inspiration there, either, because fuck his life -- and when he looks up Adam is in view again, stocking the nearby magazine rack.

It's kind of satisfying to watch _someone_ accomplish something. Or maybe it's irritating. One of those two.

Adam puts the last magazine on the shelf and looks up, toward the cafe. Ronan quickly flips through his notebook, pretending he's reading instead of staring.

Adam's legs walk into view. "Now I'm worried that you're being quiet."

"I'm lost in thought."

Adam smirks like that sounded as dumb to him as it does to Ronan when Gansey says it. Why the fuck had those words come out of his mouth? "Yeah, I buy that."

"Don't act like you're so intellectual, you just spent ten minutes arranging tabloids," Ronan says, and then bites his tongue, too late. He's already admitted to keeping tabs on Adam.

"You know that I don't personally choose what we sell here, right?"

"That doesn't absolve you. You're still in on it."

"In on...selling magazines?"

"Selling crap," Ronan says. "This place is supposed to be a _bookstore_."

"Barely. We make more from coffee sales than from books. I hope you weren't counting on getting rich off that novel."

"I'm not writing a novel."

"No?" Adam asks. "Journal? Memoir? Think piece?"

Ronan will not sit here and take this abuse. _Think piece_ , Jesus fucking Christ. "It's poetry."

Adam says, "you're a poet," in an expressionless way that means he's surprised and trying to hide it.

"What, just because I say fuck I can't write a poem?"

"Not at all. I just hadn't realized you were dangerous."

"Maybe I don't go around flinging dictionaries at people, that doesn't mean I'm a pushover."

"No, I wasn't making fun of you that time," Adam says. "Poets are much more dangerous than novelists. Poems are _short_. Writers can actually finish one, and then they want you to read it."

Writers can actually finish one poem, right, if their words don't up and disappear. Way to rub it in.

"Yeah, real scary. Why do you work at a bookstore if you hate reading so much?"

"Whether or not I hate reading depends on the writer," Adam says. "It's not like Emily Dickinson hangs out around here."

"No, 'cause she's a fucking shut-in."

Adam -- pauses. He wasn't doing anything except standing there, but somehow he gives off the impression that he'd been interrupted and had to start whatever he was doing all over.

He asks, "You're gonna go with the _recluse_ thing before the _she's dead_ thing?"

"I haven't seen her grave," Ronan says. "How do I know she's still in it?"

Adam shakes his head. Ronan doesn't get a real good look at his smile, which is maybe a good thing; just the fraction of it he does see is dazzling.

"You need to come up with a family-friendly synonym for fuck," Adam says, while Ronan fights to get his pulse or his breathing or just any damn part of himself back under control.

"There's no such thing."

"You're a writer. Get creative."

"Why?" Ronan asks, suspicious. "What do you care?"

"Because if my manager hears you swearing this close to the kid's section, she's going to kick you out." He takes a step away from the table, and right before he turns to walk away he says, like it just occurred to him, "and I think I'd be disappointed if I never got to read any of your poetry."

Then he's gone.

"Fu--n," Ronan breathes. "Shoot." The words sound stupid in his ears, but he doesn't pay much attention to that. There's too many other words in his head. He flips to a new page and starts writing about bright, blinding light.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr](https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/617922412029378560/pynch-7-3-2-for-the-prompt-game)!


End file.
